The IIDEX Woodshop Exhibition opens this Thursday, and now that we’ve covered the featured designers that were solicited for the initiative, we’re going to turn the spotlight on the 5 competition winners who will be joining their ranks at IIDEX. This week: Kevin Armour for Truss.

Kevin Armour is an award winning Canadian Industrial Designer currently working at Healthcare Human Factors, developing medical device interfaces and wearable monitoring devices. Kevin has experience working as a design consultant, developing products for a range of industries, from automotive accessories to home and garden.

We caught up with Kevin this week, and here’s what they had to say about about his competition submission, the IIDEX Woodshop initiative, and furniture design:

ideacious: As a city and IIDEX supported initiative to use a portion of the 200,000+ ash trees being destroyed over the next 5 years, IIDEX Woodshop has a strong narrative going for it. How did this inspire you when designing your piece?

Kevin Armour: What inspired me most about this initiative is the way in which the community has come together to transform and claim this material that may have otherwise been discarded. Transforming the raw material into such unique and dynamic prototypes and saving this beautiful natural resource from a grizzly demise is always a strong motivator for me. As a designer living in one of the largest urban landscapes in Canada it’s very important to create products with a strong environmental initiative – using as many locally produced materials as possible is definitely a draw.

It’s great to see so many creative minds come together and take the exact same material and “bend” it in all sorts of directions. The hope is that this project will inspire designers across Canada to continue striving to save future materials from visiting those landfills.

Many designers opt to work with aesthetically rich woods like Walnut or Maple. What are your thoughts on using Ash as your primary material? Is it a challenge, does it change your process, or do you disagree and think Ash is amazing?

I do not have much experience working with wood, so coming into this project with semi-virgin hands I had no preconceptions about Ash, my only real knowledge was that the majority of axe handles use it, because of its resistance to splitting – which sparked my idea.Instead of focusing on the aesthetic properties of the material I focused on how people have been manipulating it. I discovered that Ash is a prime wood commonly used for bending. And despite the fact that I had no experience bending before I thought this would be a great way to experiment with this theory and push the limits on how far I could push the material.

What qualities in other designers’ work often catch your attention or make you really think the designer is on to something?

Exploration and curiosity – it is obvious when someone is doing something new and interesting, it doesn’t need to make sense or be traditionally beautiful to catch my eye. For example Marcel Wanders Snotty Vase really caught my eye because it’s fun, and is desirable to me mainly because of its story.

Another great example of out of the box thinking and arousing experimentation is in Studio Hausen’s Textile Moulded Chair. Reading through this product’s particular development process and watching the experimentation roll out is really exciting to me.

And finally, what’s something that you’re really into right now?

Well… thanks to this project – wood working and furniture is something I’m really excited about these days. This is my first personally realized piece of furniture; but I don’t think it will be my last.

This post concludes our series of spotlights on the IIDEX Woodshop participants. We’re all very excited to see the pieces at IIDEX 2013 this week, and hope to see at least a few of you there!

Community, family & sharingThis 13′ dining table is a place of community, family, and where we share. White Oak, Cherry, Black Walnut and Maple panels combine to create a subtle and varied composition.

These woods, indigenous to the area in which the table is made and sold, reflect both cultural and geographical contexts. This modern piece of furniture is meant to sit at the heart of that, rooted in place. The table is finished using a durable and natural penetrating oil that, when maintained properly, will last a lifetime. It even comes with a litre of refinishing oil to be applied as necessary.

About Roundabout Studio Inc. and LOCAL FurnitureRoundabout Studio Inc is a Toronto-based design company focused on creating custom houses. They have a diverse background ranging from carpentry, finance, sciences, animal care, and software development. Their projects have ranged from furniture to houses to master plans for 300,000 square foot buildings.

LOCAL Furniture is a natural extension specializing in furniture. Roundabout Studio applies the same design standards to this new division and the LOCAL table is officially the first product for sale to the public.

The IIDEX Woodshop Exhibition is next week, and now that we’ve covered the featured designers that were solicited for the initiative, we’re going to turn the spotlight on the 5 competition winners who will be joining their ranks at IIDEX. This week: Randy Kerr for IMPRESSIONS.

Randy Kerr can often be found cutting & splitting firewood for his off-grid house that sits atop a cliff. At the café, NURBS modeling software supplements his sketchbook. At the shop, CNC machine processes complement more traditional machinery, but a fishtail gouge can be found sitting on his vacuum table.

We caught up with Randy this week, and here’s what they had to say about about his competition submission, the IIDEX Woodshop initiative, and designing digitally:

ideacious: As a city and IIDEX supported initiative to use a portion of the 200,000+ ash trees being destroyed over the next 5 years, IIDEX Woodshop has a strong narrative going for it. How did this inspire you when designing your piece?

Randy Kerr: Using wood from trees that have died due to disease, fire and weather is nothing new. It has though become more popular in part out of necessity as our forest resources have been depleted. Its been my experience that the volume of high quality of furniture grade woods are less and less as each day goes by. I have noticed that for the most part high end woodworkers still aspire to using the select and better lumber and architectural grade veneers but many contemporary industrial and architectural designers have seen the benefit to using this “secondary” resource of salvaged material with its inherent expressiveness, formerly seen as defects. It was 50 years ago that George Nakashima popularized the use of live edge lumber and this salvaged wood is often perfectly suited to have that cambium surface as a design detail. We can no longer afford to waste a single piece of wood, call it post rationalization or finally see the beauty in the mineral stains and crooked grain. The salvaged wood from urban and storm ravaged trees may help take a small amount of pressure off of our remnant forests. The entrance doors in my house came from an ice storm damaged tree on my property. This time I designed around the “defects” by digitally drawing in Rhino on top of an image of the ash wood that I received. The carved vessel in this case had to flow around the checks in the knots to provide a sound and useful object that would hopefully not distort too much when relieved of the surrounding wood.

Many designers opt to work with aesthetically rich woods like Walnut or Maple. What are your thoughts on using Ash as your primary material? Is it a challenge, does it change your process, or do you disagree and think Ash is amazing?

Ash was the first wood that I ever worked, making my own snow shoes as a kid. I then went on to make chairs completely by hand using both green and dried ash. The smell of working ash today evokes wonderful memories of those days. The aroma of the green wood shavings that piled up at my feet had a much sweeter smell than the dry shavings that fly off of a CNC router today. Over the years I have worked 1000s of board feet of lumber and 1000s of sq. feet of veneer and nothing takes me back with a smile to those days of draw knives and spoke shaves like the smell of Fraxinus Americana . Ash is amazing, aesthetically its surface texture is powerful and demanding because of that it needs to help support the form to avoid unwanted negative tensions.

What qualities in other designers’ work often catch your attention or make you really think the designer is on to something?

Regrettably I pay very little attention to names other than the obvious great ones from Zaha Hadid to Wendle Castle, its is the objects alone that seem to catch my attention. Simplicity of form, direct to the point, an expressive process and craftsmanship all tied together by concept are what have me taking a second look.

And finally, what’s something that you’re really into right now?

I have been around for a while, today what i am into is designing digitally. That is what has caught my attention and in my case it is simply drawing in ‘Rhino’. I cannot say that I have caught up to where I once was. I am having fun these last several years learning this new process and I am always surprised by the results. Couple that with CNC fab and some good old fashioned hand work and I am a happy man.

Stay tuned for next week as we have the scoop on Kevin Armour and the Truss table.

The IIDEX Woodshop Exhibition is just 2 weeks away, and now that we’ve covered the featured designers that were solicited for the initiative, we’re going to turn the spotlight on the 5 competition winners who will be joining their ranks at IIDEX. This week: Miles Keller for the Kona Chair

Miles Keller has over twenty years of professional experience as an industrial designer. His company, Dystil, is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and provides services in all facets of the design process. You may remember from the Designer Profile we posted some time ago, that Miles is one of Canada’s most highly regarded industrial designers and his work has been widely recognized, including the ID Magazine Annual Design Review (1989), the IDEA Awards (1997, 2005), the Virtu Canadian Design Awards (1995, 6, 7, 8, 9), the IIDEX/NeoCon Canada Awards (2002), the Best of Canada Design Awards (2002), and the Good Design Award (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005). His most recent accolades include a Silver IDEA award from IDSA and a Silver Design Exchange Award, both in 2006.

We caught up with Miles this week, and here’s what they had to say about about his competition submission, the IIDEX Woodshop initiative, and his new found love of Ash:

ideacious: As a city and IIDEX supported initiative to use a portion of the 200,000+ ash trees being destroyed over the next 5 years, IIDEX Woodshop has a strong narrative going for it. How did this inspire you when designing your piece?

Miles Keller: As has been pointed out by the first peoples, we breath what the trees exhale and they breath what we exhale…. we share a common destiny. We are joined, we are one. So losing up to 900,000 trees over the next ten years is a tragedy.

Many designers opt to work with aesthetically rich woods like Walnut or Maple. What are your thoughts on using Ash as your primary material? Is it a challenge, does it change your process, or do you disagree and think Ash is amazing?

I have to be honest, I have never really liked ash. But we did a lot of research for this project. And I discovered that ash was once one of the most revered hardwoods. And its one of the toughest; used in everything from baseball bats to hockey sticks. North American indigenous peoples used the wood to make things like spears in part because it was so tough and flexible.

We went to the Scarborough wood lot and walked through that vast pile of logs and picked one that would work for us. We needed green wood and straight grain. Then we found a sawyer and had it cut into planks. And in the process I can honestly I’ve developed a great affection for the wood. Its a beautiful, honest and strong, tough wood.

What qualities in other designers’ work often catch your attention or make you really think the designer is on to something?

Well, first off we’ re industrial designers, not woodworkers. But what I look for and really respect in other designers work is honesty, respect and craft. I love seeing work that respects the process, the material and the user. And hopefully its done in a creative, witty way.

And finally, what’s something that you’re really into right now?

What am I in to now? Ash! Honestly, I’m going to be doing more with this amazing wood. And sadly there’s a lot of trees coming down in the next few years. I love the idea of combining wood with new materials like carbon fibre or aluminum to create entirely unexpected and hopefully inspiring results. As for industrial design in general, there’s never been a better time to be in the profession. The tools and technology at our fingertips means the big problems facing us all can be attacked in new ways, like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop.

Stay tuned for next week as we have the scoop on Randy Kerr and his submission, Vessel.

The IIDEX Woodshop Exhibition is just a few weeks away, and now that we’ve covered the featured designers that were solicited for the initiative, we’re going to turn the spotlight on the 5 competition winners who will be joining their ranks at IIDEX. This week: Sathvik Sivaprakash for Halcyon

Sathvik Sivaprakash is a Toronto-based freelance Industrial Designer with a degree from the School of Industrial Design at Carleton University. A rising creative force in the design scene, some of Sathvik’s more prominent achievements include being a finalist in Design21’s Power to the Pedal competition (2008), being part of the team that developed Teknion’s Optos Curve Wall that won a Silver Award at NEOCON (2009) and presenting his thesis project at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town, South Africa (2010). More recently, he was involved in developing The Capitalist iPhone case that is currently in preorder on ideacious.

We caught up with Sathvik this week, and here’s what they had to say about about his competition submission, the IIDEX Woodshop initiative, and doubling over with laughter:

ideacious: As a city and IIDEX supported initiative to use a portion of the 200,000+ ash trees being destroyed over the next 5 years, IIDEX Woodshop has a strong narrative going for it. How did this inspire you when designing your piece?

Sathvik Sivaprakash: The one thing that struck a cord with me as I was creating my IIDEX Woodshop submission was the sheer volume of surplus Ash that is going to be available in the next few years. To this end, I strived to create a product with wide applicability, that still addressed a gap in the market – and that’s where Halcyon comes in with a fresh take on window blinds.

Many designers opt to work with aesthetically rich woods like Walnut or Maple. What are your thoughts on using Ash as your primary material? Is it a challenge, does it change your process, or do you disagree and think Ash is amazing?

One of the tenets of my design philosophy is “everything in its right place”. While Walnut in particular is one of my favorite woods to work with in the context of creating richness and depth, I believe Ash has its own place as a strong, durable wood that lends itself well to a minimalist aesthetic. As I have been developing my prototype I’ve also really come to appreciate what a great wood it is to work with. It machines great and has excellent tensile strength.

What qualities in other designers’ work often catch your attention or make you really think the designer is on to something?

I find this varies a lot based on the type of product I’m looking at. When it comes to furniture I find myself drawn to pieces with a strong attention to detail/proportions and interesting construction techniques. Konstantin Grcic happens to be one of my favorite designers when it comes to achieving this.

And finally, what’s something that you’re really into right now?

I’ve been really into all the work Nendo has been doing lately – they really excel at creating minimalist objects/spaces with just the right amount of flair and wit. Oki Sato’s presentation on creative process at IDS 2012 is also one of the most inspiring I’ve seen to date.

In my downtime, I recently discovered Creature Comforts USA – its by the creators of Wallace & Gromit and is simply incredible – its not often I find a show that makes me literally laugh out loud (like doubled over, not just the usual chuckle).

Stay tuned for next week as we have the scoop on Miles Keller and the Kona Chair.

The IIDEX Woodshop Exhibtion is just about a month away, and now that we’ve covered the featured designers that were solicited for the initiative, we’re going to turn the spotlight on the 5 competition winners who will be joining their ranks at IIDEX. This week: Fieldhouse, Ford + Reed for their SLASH+BURN lamps.

Fieldhouse, Ford + Reed is an emerging collaborative design team formed by three former Furniture Craft & Design students from Sheridan College: C.R. Fieldhouse, Simon Ford and Lauren Reed. The three have come together to imagine new and innovative designs that reflect their belief in the simplicity of functional objects that marry concept, experimentation and materiality.

We caught up with Fieldhouse, Ford + Reed recently, and here’s what they had to say about about their competition submission, ash trees and the IIDEX Woodshop initiative:

ideacious: As a city and IIDEX supported initiative to use a portion of the 200,000+ ash trees being destroyed over the next 5 years, IIDEX Woodshop has a strong narrative going for it. How did this inspire you when designing your piece?

Fieldhouse, Ford + Reed: We really latched on to the idea of a natural life cycle and destruction. These trees are being killed by an invasive pest, and many likely to become wood chips and firewood. We wanted to appropriate that concept of destruction and use it to define our concept. Shou-sugi-ban is a traditional Japanese method of burning the exterior of house siding to create a weather and pest proof exterior. Even though the trees are dead, their wood is still susceptible to rot, pests and weather. So through this somewhat destructive process we are actually protecting the wood from these threats. We took this idea of a natural armour, and applied it to hand-turned pendant lights; too late for the trees, but it provides us an interesting texture and finish.

Many designers opt to work with aesthetically rich woods like Walnut or Maple. What are your thoughts on using Ash as your primary material? Is it a challenge, does it change your process, or do you disagree and think Ash is amazing?

Much of our previous work has been in walnut and maple, but we’ve also worked with ash in the past. It has a lightness of colour similar to maple, but also a strong graphic grain pattern. It is predominantly used in tool handles and baseball bats, and is fairly inexpensive. This brings a somewhat utilitarian aesthetic to the wood, which we think is an interesting characteristic to play with. Ash may not be the most desirable wood out there, but we think this is changing. It is an incredible local resource, so for us, if this project can help change perceptions of what ash can be, then all the better.What qualities in other designers’ work often catch your attention or make you really think the designer is on to something?

We’re attracted to fresh ways of solving common problems. A lot of popular design objects right now are more about aesthetics than function. For us, pieces with strong, even experimental, concepts backed up by clear and simple functionality are really attractive.

And finally, what’s something that you’re really into right now?

The three of us have each become really interested in wood turning over the past few years. The process of working on the lathe is much more intuitive than other woodshop techniques – most are fairly calculated and planned. On the lathe you get instant feedback and can be much more spontaneous and experimental with your designs. Round is the new square?

Stay tuned for next week as we have the scoop on Sathvik Sivaprakash and the Halcyon window blinds.